2023-07-28 13:59:51
An approximately 1800-year-old ivory knife handle found in Austria comes from what is now China, according to new scientific findings.
The archaeological find probably traveled a distance of around 6000 kilometers in the pocket of a traveler in Roman times, according to the Minoriten City Museum in Wels in Upper Austria. The find is thus the furthest west found from the region and this epoch.
The handle, which was seven centimeters long and discovered during excavations in Wels in 1918, has now been correctly classified for the first time with the help of German experts. According to this, the knife handle came from the Niya Oasis on the Silk Road in the Taklamakan Desert, said Renate Miglbauer, city archaeologist and museum director. The site is now part of the Xinjiang Uyghur region in northwest China.
In Roman times, Wels was an important trading center called Ovilava. The find was unlikely to have gotten there through trade. Because the inscription only makes sense in the geographical area where it was read and the language was understood. It can therefore be assumed that the owner probably brought the knife with him on a journey along the Silk Road.
According to Miglbauer, the work of the archaeologist and ancient historian Stefan Pfahl from the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf was decisive. During a visit, he recognized the peculiarity of the piece. The Indologist Harry Falk from the Free University of Berlin identified the inscription (“honour-giving gift for Mr. Tadara) as Khar, a variant of the ancient Indian script Kharosthi.
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